Shadow Tag, Perdition Games

by L E Fraser

  Emily took Sam’s hand again. “The practicum is genuine, I promise. Regardless of the outcome of the investigation, my expectations around your clinical performance here will be identical to those regarding any other intern. My mentorship will be identical to what I offer any other intern. Should you not meet my expectations, I will not provide you with a favourable review. I’m not proposing anything deceitful.”

  Sam stood with one hand on the doorknob, deliberating. On the one hand, she desperately wanted to learn under the talented neuropsychiatrist. On the other hand, she felt manipulated. Yes, Emily had shaken her confidence by admitting that she hadn’t earned the spot based on her academic achievements. But was her disappointment making her cynical, clouding her judgment? Sam gave her head a figurative shake. A sexual predator was raping a teenage girl, whom doctors might have misdiagnosed with a mental illness she didn’t have. That illness had been the court’s justification for suspending her legal right to make decisions regarding every aspect of her life. Did anything else matter?

  “I’ll take a look into the security breach,” Sam said. “If we can recover even a partial frame of the obstructed data, you may be able to identify the rapist.”

  “Will you think about the internship?” Emily asked. “Maybe meet Fadiya?”

  Sam opened her wallet and found one of Eli’s cards. “I’ll brief our IT expert and he’ll expect your call. Introduce him to your security specialist and they’ll sort out the system access details.”

  Emily took the card. “I’ve handled this dreadfully,” she said with a frown. “I’m so sorry. I hope you’ll consider me as your mentor. It would be an honour to help you complete your PhD.”

  “Why?” Sam demanded.

  Emily smiled, “I believe you possess the inherent ability to intuitively understand people’s unconscious needs. You proved me right this morning.”

  “How?” Sam asked.

  “Life has a way of stripping people’s dignity,” Emily said. “I was outside the bistro this morning and watched you. You saw a way to give that veteran what he truly longed for.”

  “I gave him a sandwich,” Sam said.

  Emily shook her head. “No. You acknowledged how much he’d sacrificed. You gave him gratitude.”

  Sam stepped into the hallway. “Have your security person contact Eli.” She turned back to face Emily, struggling to keep her disappointment at bay. “Thanks for meeting with me.”

  “Please consider working with me,” Emily said softly. “Please help Fadiya. You may be her only hope.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Reece

  REECE PULLED INTO his reserved parking space at the back of a converted warehouse in Corktown where he shared a thousand-square-foot loft space with Sam. At least a faint hint of colour still painted the western horizon. These days, it was unusual for him to get home until well after sunset.

  He turned off his Honda and sat quietly in the car, reviewing the multiple tasks on his to-do list that he’d failed to accomplish. He hadn’t checked-in with Eli on the office renovations, and he’d promised Sam that she wouldn’t have to be involved. His promise was why she’d reluctantly agreed to the massive project. Sam didn’t like change, even positive change, but Reece couldn’t stand another freezing winter in their dilapidated, miniature office in Little Italy. Not that he’d have an opportunity to visit it. Especially not now, since his articling principal had given him an odious, time-sucking task.

  He popped the sedan’s trunk and circled the car to retrieve two large file boxes. Closing the trunk with his elbow, he trudged to the building’s back entrance, trying to balance the heavy boxes in one arm so he could negotiate the security lock with the other. They were on the top floor of a thirty-thousand-square-foot warehouse with eighteen-foot ceilings, but he wasn’t going to risk the unreliable elevator. Reece plodded up the stairs and shuffled down a long corridor to the front of the converted warehouse. The wide hallway was suffocating. Scorching July sun had flooded in all day from the three-storey glass front of the building. He hoped Sam had surrendered to practicality and had put on the air conditioning. She disliked AC, but between the floor-to-ceiling windows and multiple skylights, the loft would be sweltering tonight.

  A quiet evening with Sam—with any luck in air-conditioned comfort—was just what Reece needed. He considered various dinner options and settled on Thai coconut chicken curry. He’d grind his own garam masala and make ghee. Cooking always lowered his stress. After dinner, he’d share with Sam the horrible conflict he felt over his new assignment.

  Outside their front door, his heart dropped. Voices—one male and two female. The last thing Reece felt like was entertaining. He hoped it wasn’t Sam’s best friend, Lisa Stipelli, and her husband Jim. Reece enjoyed Jim’s company, but at only thirty-nine, Jim was Toronto’s most prominent criminal attorney, while Reece was a forty-year-old articling student. The fact Reece had risen to the impressive rank of inspector with the provincial police, didn’t assuage his sense of failure tonight. If he hadn’t dropped out of law school to pursue law enforcement, he wouldn’t be a middle-aged articling student. Maybe he should have accepted the Toronto Police Services' offer and joined their homicide squad. Inside that chaotic bullpen, working with the blue brethren, was where he’d felt at home. Instead, he now faced the loathsome task of betraying colleagues he respected. He kicked one of the damn file boxes. Childish, sure, but it made him feel better. He took a deep breath, plastered a smile on his face, and flung open the door.

  A flash of fawn zoomed across his peripheral vision and a solid mass plowed into his legs, knocking him off balance. The boxes flew from his flailing arms, and file folders scattered across the glossy hemlock floor. As he fumbled to grab a box, sharp teeth nipped at his scrambling fingers.

  “Pepin escaped his puppy crate. Again,” Sam said from the gourmet kitchen.

  Reece squatted to pat the French bulldog. “You have to latch it,” he said in Pepin’s defence.

  She adjusted the heat under one of the six burners on their Viking gas range. “Locking that thing requires a PhD in robotic engineering. Besides, it wouldn’t matter. He’s Houdini.”

  Reece caught a note of distaste in her voice. He’d bought her the puppy after Brandy, her golden retriever, had died. It had seemed like a great idea at the time, something to help her deal with her crushing grief. Now, though, he was having second thoughts. Sam was kind to the puppy, but he sensed a growing dislike for the chubby little firecracker.

  “He ate one of your slippers.” She chuckled maliciously.

  “Not the Mukluks! I love those.” Reece sighed and turned to their employee, Eli, who stood impatiently by the large kitchen island. “How’s everything going with the renovations?”

  “It is not good. It is very bad. Removing the wall between the two office spaces is a problem. It is load bearing. We must have an engineered support beam. It will be costly. There is a problem with the flooring, and—”

  “Forget I asked.” Reece groaned, tugging off his tie, and rolling up the sleeves of his white dress shirt.

  Eli, who had Asperger’s, had reported this spew of bad news with his usual lack of expression. But Reece had learned to read nuances in the young man’s body language that precipitated a meltdown. Right now, Eli’s rigid stance, twitching index finger, and roaming eyes suggested he was a heartbeat from freaking out. They could deal with the reno glitches after dinner.

  “You’re cooking,” Reece said to Sam, careful to inject enthusiasm into his tone. Sam was a terrible cook.

  “My dad’s chili.” She held out a wooden spoon.

  He tentatively licked it and tried not to gag on the overpowering salt.

  “Yummy,” he murmured. When she wasn’t looking, he’d try to sneak in some lime and fat to neutralize the salt. “How was the interview?”

  She turned her back and rinsed the spoon. “She offered me the clinical practicum, but there are strings.”

&nb
sp; “Strings?”

  “Yup, and I consider them unethical.” She nodded her chin at Eli, who was watching the two of them uneasily, waiting to hear all about it. “We’ll talk about it later,” she said calmly, then turned back to Reece. “Any chance of bread sticks?”

  “Sure.”

  “The ones with cheese inside?” She wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned in to whisper in his ear. “If I pretend I don’t notice, will you fix the salt in my chili?”

  He laughed and kissed her. “Pour me a glass of wine, please.” He pulled out a mixing bowl and began assembling the ingredients.

  “What’s this?”

  Reece turned to see Danny, Eli’s sister, rummaging around the spilled file boxes.

  “My boss asked me to audit police due diligence in those closed sudden-death cases.” He swallowed his disdain. “She ordered me to question every ruling and to investigate discreetly.”

  “Ouch.” Sam handed him a glass of red wine. “How do you feel about sneaking around examining the proficiency of officers you respect?”

  Leave it to Sam to cut straight to the heart of the problem, he thought wryly.

  “Not good, but I don’t have a choice. I’m her articling student.” He set aside his yeast to bubble. “Gretchen claims she received an anonymous tip that over the past three years, a serial killer has hidden murders as suicides, accidental mishaps, and natural deaths.”

  “Hmm… So, we can rule out a subject who achieves pleasure from showcasing extreme violence.” Sam paused in thought. “Cops and coroners misjudging cause of death might satisfy abnormal gratification.” She picked up one of the files. “The question is how we figure out which ones are possible homicides.” She flipped through the folder she held. “Studying victimology will be helpful. There might be a profile pattern.”

  “Why didn’t your boss turn this so-called tip over to the cops?” Danny asked. “Shouldn’t homicide investigate?”

  Sam looked up with a frown. “Good question.”

  Reece finished grating the smoked cheddar and took a sip of his wine, appreciating the vibrant plum note on his palette. “She wouldn’t tell me. She wants the audit to stay off Toronto Police Services' radar,” he said with a grimace.

  “Maybe Gretchen wants to validate the tip prior to proceeding through usual channels,” Sam suggested but her green eyes looked doubtful.

  “I can’t figure out her agenda. I guess it’s above my paygrade,” Reece said, trying to curb his bitterness. He mixed the dough and turned it onto the counter to knead.

  Gretchen had told him there would be ‘dire consequences’ should he breach her trust by disclosing any aspect of his assignment to anyone employed by or associated with the police department. Reece didn’t know what was going on, but the lack of transparency didn’t sit well with him.

  “We will help you investigate these files,” Eli announced. He placed a box on the dining room table beside the ladder staircase that led to the elevated bedroom loft.

  Reece finished kneading the bread dough and set it into the proofing oven, wiping down the Carrera marble countertop. None of his team was associated with the police department, but Reece suddenly felt uncomfortable sharing what he had. If a Crown attorney terminated his articling position with cause—especially due to breach of confidentiality—that would end his law career before it had gotten off the ground.

  “Look, I appreciate it, but involving outsiders is against protocol,” Reece stated, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut and had spoken to Sam in private.

  Danny turned from the eighteen-foot-high windows across the long south wall. “Then don’t tell anyone,” she retorted, and crossed the large open space to the table. “For a smart man, you can be remarkably stupid.” She opened her laptop, which she never went anywhere without, and stared with disgust at the boxes of files. “Any chance your office joined the twenty-first century and you have this in electronic form?”

  He opened his laptop bag and pulled out a hard drive. Danny had a PhD in computer engineering and a master’s in computer science. She was a world-renowned white-hat hacker on the deep web. She was also a hermit with an off-putting personality who lived with her brother and had an unhealthy distrust of everyone else. She’d grudgingly accepted Sam and Reece into her inner circle, but that had only been because of her brother’s devotion to them. Danny could break any encryption and access any system. Although she was just twenty-five, experts considered her a prodigy and she had collaborated with multiple government agencies during the year Reece had known her. She never spoke of her highly confidential projects. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, Reece thought resignedly. He’d intended on soliciting Sam’s help with the psychological profiling, which also broke procedure, so he might as well have Danny on board too.

  With a twinge of guilt, Reece handed her the portable hard drive.

  “I’ll design a database and code an algorithm to manipulate the data to search for commonalities in the cases,” she said. “You old folks can hunt through mountains of paper.” She snickered and attached the drive to her computer.

  Sam took his hand. “I know how uncomfortable this assignment makes you,” she said sympathetically. “Maybe the tip is bogus. It’s possible that the original officers and detectives didn’t miss anything.” She patted the pile of folders. “Every one of these could be legitimate accidents, suicides, and natural deaths.”

  “That would be brilliant,” Reece said. “Fingers crossed you’re right.”

  “Annalise Huang, a social media consultant,” Eli read. “Investigators ruled her death as a suicide three months ago. She hanged herself from her staircase after a breakup.”

  Danny snorted in contempt. “I hate that ‘gotta-have-a-man’ type of woman. Who kills herself over a douche-bag?”

  Eli ignored her. “According to Mrs. Huang, her daughter’s ex-fiancé financially ruined her and was stalking her with a drone.” He scrolled through his cell phone, rubbing the six-centimetre scar across the right side of his face. “Annalise posted her suicide note on Facebook. That was after she posted a ton of things about her ex.” He passed his phone to Reece. His sleeve rode up and he quickly tugged it down to cover the puckered cigarette burns on his forearm.

  Reece scrolled down and read a string of slanderous posts. “Wow, putting all this online seems unstable.”

  “You can’t judge someone’s mental stability based on reactionary behaviour after a hurtful breakup.” Sam took the file from Eli and read. “Hmm… her mother adamantly argued that her daughter was not suicidal. She was flying home to Vancouver the next day. Phone records confirmed they’d spoken less than an hour prior to Annalise’s death.” She flipped the file around to show Reece. “Mom’s a therapist.” She raised an eyebrow at him.

  “And aren’t you the one who said that therapists often have the most messed-up kids?” Reece ran his fingers through his thick black hair and tempered his tone. “Sorry, I sound defensive but I read that file and the cops couldn’t find anyone who saw this alleged drone,” he said. “And they did a thorough investigation, even confirming her ex’s iron-clad alibi.” He pointed at a line in a statement report. “Her friend, Denise, was with Annalise earlier that night and told police she was depressed.”

  Sam shrugged. “Her other friends denied that. They referred to Annalise as self-important. One described her as a ‘quintessential mean-girl’.” She paused. “The drone is weird, Reece. It’s a handy tool for a stalker. Let’s put this one in the investigate pile.”

  They’d just started, and already Reece felt like a traitor, nitpicking at an accomplished officer’s investigative prowess.

  “Why does this one have a green sticker on it?” Danny asked.

  “I vetted it and there’s a suicide motive,” Reece said. “The woman ran down a pregnant mother and two toddlers in a grocery store parking lot. The heel of her flip-flop doubled back and she couldn’t pull her foot off the acceler
ator. One of the toddlers died at the scene, the other sustained permanent brain damage, and the baby died ten hours after an emergency C-section.”

  Danny highlighted one line in the middle of the electronic file on her screen. “Did you see this?”

  With growing dread, Reece read the notation. Prior to her alleged suicide, the woman had filed a legal appeal, stating that a ten-year licence suspension was unreasonable punishment.

  Sam read over his shoulder. “She killed two children, left the third with acquired brain injury, and she considered a licence suspension too harsh?”

  “My point exactly,” Danny said. “What’s the likelihood of someone with no remorse killing herself?”

  “Not good.” Sam closed the file. “It’s not surprising that the investigators missed a note buried in a pile of court documents.”

  Reece disagreed. Death investigations followed rigid procedures to eliminate the risk of reaching erroneous conclusions. This was a careless oversight by a detective with too high a caseload.

  Sam plopped down another file in a separate pile. “This one is natural causes. Cause of death was a pulmonary embolism.”

  Danny made an odd growling noise in the back of her throat.

  Sam rolled her eyes at Reece and then scrutinized Danny. “Out with it. That growl always means you have something to say.”

  “Potassium chloride,” Danny mumbled.

  “What about it?” Reece was certain he didn’t want to know.

  “Leaves no trace and presents as pulmonary embolism,” she said. “Buy potassium chloride pills in the vitamin aisle of any drugstore, compound a high concentration into a liquid, pick an obscured site, and inject your victim intravenously. Easy-breezy.” Without shifting her eyes from the code on her screen, she reached for another file.

  “Danny has been studying medicine as a hobby,” Eli announced proudly.